It’s so tiresome.

A really good writer emailed me yesterday to ask about how to get more attention for his (truly excellent) work on Medium. He’s a real artist, an intellectual, and a polished prose master.

I didn’t have any solid answers for him. I had to tell him I don’t even know how I gained a modicum of popularity on Medium.

The vagaries of establishing readership are mysterious. How many people have I seen do exactly the right things, just what all the gurus say to do, only to make no headway at all?

Too many.

Only one thing is sure. If you write an article about how to make lots of money on Medium, people are going to read it.

But in my opinion, that’s a cheap trick that doesn’t work very often.

I write on Medium because I have something to say. I count myself very lucky indeed that for some reason, I have managed to find a bit of an audience for that.

I count myself luckier still that the Partner Program sometimes works for me.

But you know what? It could stop working just as easily as it started. And just as mysteriously.

So you won’t find me trying to peddle any magic formulas. Because there aren’t any.